The Oath of Eight Summers
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 4: What Sisters Do
The persimmon tree had been a problem since August.
That was when the fruit first showed color, going from hard green to the particular orange-gold that meant the season was turning and Park Jisoon’s annual transformation from ordinary irritable old man to territorial persimmon guardian was fully underway. He had been seen twice already walking the perimeter of his garden wall with the focused intensity of a man conducting a military inspection, and the village understood this as the official beginning of persimmon season.
Nobody went near that tree.
Jo Soo had been watching it since August.
So Yeon had been watching Jo Soo watch it.
She was eight now. Three years on the farm had done things to her that the palace never could have — her hands were capable and slightly rough, her feet knew every path between the mill and the well and the market without needing to think about it, and she had developed the particular farm girl skill of reading weather and seasons and the ripeness of things with her eyes and her hands and the back of her neck.
She could read Jo Soo too.
Jo Soo at thirteen had the same focused assessment for fruit that she had for everything else. And for three weeks she had been looking at Park Jisoon’s persimmon tree the way she looked at problems that were waiting to be solved.
So Yeon waited until they were sitting on the step after the noon meal, the village quiet around them in the autumn warmth, before she said it.
“Hey sister. I have a naughty idea.”
Jo Soo didn’t look up from the rope she was repairing. Kept her hands moving in their steady rhythm.
“How naughty,” she said.
So Yeon looked at the wall of Park Jisoon’s garden visible from where they sat. At the persimmon tree whose highest branches were visible above it, heavy with fruit, the lowest branch hanging just above the wall’s edge on the far corner.
She told her.
Jo Soo’s hands slowed. Stopped.
She looked at the wall. Looked at the branch. Performed the rapid internal calculation of someone assessing a situation with the professional attention it deserved.
Jo Soo put down the rope with great deliberateness and looked at her younger sister with the expression of a person who recognized exactly what was happening and was going to be annoyed about it.
“Fine,” she said. “But you go first.”
The wall was higher from this side than it had looked from the yard. So Yeon discovered this approximately halfway up, at the point where commitment exceeded wisdom and turning back was no longer a reasonable option. She went over anyway with the focused determination of someone who had started something and intended to finish it regardless of the wall’s opinions on the matter.
She dropped into Park Jisoon’s garden.
Jo Soo landed beside her a moment later, quieter and more practiced, having apparently done this before without admitting it.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.